Printable sheet
Road roller with a big front drum rolling over fresh pavement between traffic cones. An easy kids page you can download as a free PDF.
Printable sheet
Free for personal and educational use
Download PDFPrintSide view of a road roller with a front drum, seat in a cab, big rear wheel, exhaust pipe, road with a dashed line, cones and clouds.
Leave the drum gray and color the cab a cheerful color.
Roll a rolling pin over play dough and see how flat it gets.
Asphalt is spread while hot because it hardens as it cools.
A road roller has a really important job: making asphalt smooth and tight. When a paving machine spreads hot asphalt, it is soft and full of air pockets, so the roller drives over it again and again to squash it down.
Its drum is a heavy metal cylinder that turns like a giant wheel. As it rolls, it presses the little stones in the asphalt together, so the road ends up firm, free of bumps and ready for cars.
To keep hot asphalt from sticking to the drum, many rollers sprinkle it with a little water as they go. They also move very slowly, back and forth, so they do not leave marks behind.
Long ago, road rollers ran on steam and puffed smoke from a chimney, which is why people still call them steamrollers. Today they have modern engines, and some vibrate to pack the road even better. Bright cones mark the work zone so cars go around until the asphalt cools. Besides roads, rollers work on parking lots, airport runways and bike paths. The smallest ones are steered by a worker walking behind them, almost like a lawn mower.
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